The Border Patrol reported Thursday that it had found the body of a missing 4-year-old girl on the border with Mexico when she tried to cross the Rio Grande with her mother near Eagle Pass, Texas.
"Following investigations, the individual matched the description of a 4-year-old girl reported missing on March 4," the Border Patrol's Eagle Pass Station said in a news release Thursday.
[Announced immigration relief for unaccompanied minors]
The minor, of Nicaraguan nationality, like her mother, were trying to get to Miami, Florida, where they had relatives, according to La Voz newspaper.
The woman told the authorities that
her daughter fell into the river and was swept away by the current.
After searching the area for nearly a week, a team of divers found the girl floating about 6 miles (10 kilometers) downriver from where she had attempted to cross into the United States.
"It's a horror movie": the story of the mother who drowned with her son in the Rio Bravo
March 10, 202201:54
The discovery comes just one day after the death of a Uruguayan mother and her 4-year-old son while trying to swim across the Rio Grande.
The husband of the deceased woman, who managed to get to the mainland, assured the Mexican authorities that the current took them downriver.
The National Institute of Migration (INM) reported this Thursday that firefighters from Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, located the body of the minor and that
the search for the mother continues.
[More Than 150 Haitian Migrants Rescued From Shipwreck Off Florida Coast]
So far this year, Mexico has intercepted 73,034 migrants in an irregular situation, according to INM data.
Of that total, 61,469 were adult women and men, in addition to 11,565 minors, of whom 2,259 were unaccompanied children and adolescents and 9,306 accompanied minors.
The three countries from which the most migrants were intercepted were Guatemala, with 14,095;
Honduras, with 13,867;
and El Salvador, with 4,145.
Another 40,927 migrants came from various Latin American countries, Africa, Europe and Asia.
